Winners and Losers: Wilander on Fish vs. Tsonga

NEW YORK—On Monday afternoon, I spent about a set and a half watching Mardy Fish and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga contest their fourth-round match in the company of seven-time Grand Slam champion Mats Wilander, who won the U.S. Open in 1988. These days, Wilander has a company, Wilander on Wheels (WOW, www.wilanderonwheels.com), through which he brings a traveling clinic to clubs and groups around the country. Wilander has been conducting WOW sessions at the West Side Tennis Club and other Tri-state locations every day during the Open. He also commentates and reports on tennis for various broadcast networks.

After the conclusion of the Serena Williams-Ana Ivanovic match, the genial Swede and I settled into two loge seats and did a little pre-game show of our own. Going into the match, Wilander didn’t have a favorite. “Right now, Mardy is more confident, playing slightly better. Tsonga is more of a free spirit; he only sees opportunity. He’s playing every match as an adventure, where Fish’s whole career has been a big adventure and we’re near the end, so there’s more pressure on Fish.”

Watching the first few games roll by on serve, Wilander summarized the players’ mindsets: Fish had become very methodical of late and was probably one of the most “well read” players on tour when it came to strategy. In contrast, Tsonga can be a little sloppy, is susceptible to losing focus, playing without purpose, and going for too much.

All of this brought us to a delightfully simple concept that Wilander calls the Main Plan, by which he means the strategic core around which an overall game plan is constructed. His recommendations going into the match: For Tsonga, to break down Fish’s forehand. For Fish, to stay in the match mentally and physically, recognize when Tsonga went on a walkabout, and take advantage.

Now here’s the thing about the Main Plan, according to Wilander: You only get to act on it every nine or ten points. On the other points, as they say, life intrudes: Your opponent takes it to you, you make an unforced error, and so on. “At the end of a match, you add up the points, and it might be 260 to 240 points,” he said. “You have to win the right ones.” Those are the moments when you want to go to the Main Plan.

By the time things were at 3-all, Wilander was liking Fish’s overall game plan a whole lot more than Tsonga’s. Rather than taking control of points, Tsonga seemed content to play rallies without authority, giving Fish three to five chances per point to pick the moment he felt most comfortable to impose himself and get to net. “He’s literally asking him to do what he wants to do,” Wilander said of Tsonga. And Wilander was loving Fish’s commitment to coming forward because “Tsonga—unlike, say, Nadal or Djokovic—doesn’t necessarily like a target.”

Wilander also went on at length about how players cope with the level of wind present on court today. I’d always thought that on-air commentators inflated this aspect of matches to pad air time, but after listening to Wilander, I now believe they understate it. He gave me more insights than I can share here, but to summarize a few nuggets: serving with the wind, a slice delivery is advisable, and—in his opinion— “There’s literally no chance you can hit a winner into the wind.” So what should a player returning into the wind do? “Chip it,” he said, pantomiming, then praised the way Andy Roddick played against Julien Benneteau Sunday afternoon.

The assessment wasn’t much kinder when Tsonga stepped up to serve out the set. The Frenchman hit two unforced errors to go down 0-30, at which point Wilander chuckled, shook his head ruefully, and said, “I guess they’re not closers, either of them.” On the next point, Fish sliced an approach wide and Wilander said, “You cannot do that. The width is not important on an approach, the depth is important.” He paused, then added: “He should have hit it four or five feet over. The main thing is to get it in the court, and he didn’t.”

As Fish failed to get the last three returns of the set into play, losing it 6-4, Wilander’s comments grew more critical. He also wasn’t very impressed by Tsonga’s first return game of the second set, which ended with two forehands that sailed long. “Fish is rattled,” Wilander said, offering that a top player, like Nadal, would have broken “nine times out of ten” to open the second set. “But Tsonga is just, like, ‘I’m still here. Let’s play tennis.’ He helps Fish get back up.” Sure enough, Fish hung in and took the second set. But he did it with a bit of luck:  A net-cord winner handed Fish back a mini-break, after which an unforced forehand error by Tsonga presented him with a set point that—to his credit—he stepped up and took with a forehand winner.

I feel it’s important to note the utter matter-of-factness with which Wilander shared his opinions.  His tone wasn’t cruel or disparaging. The content of his remarks might sound harsh, but the more he talked, the more I appreciated why the man left the game with seven major titles in his pocket and the guys on court had a combined total of zero. At this level of the sport, it’s kill or be killed. There are moments where one simply has to put returns in play, go for the percentages, and execute. Of course, those of us who follow the sport already know this, but the utter simplicity and severity of it—as experienced watching a match with a legend—was striking.

Wilander had to split for a broadcasting commitment, but as the contest wore on, his observations colored my own impressions: It might have been pretty had Tsonga pulled off the few surprise drop shots he attempted in the middle of rallies he had utter control of, running Fish corner to corner at will. But wouldn’t a forehand winner have been a perfectly fine alternative? As the unforced errors kept piling up (by the end, Tsonga would have hit 59 to Fish’s 55), I felt utter disdain for them. All I could think was that, regardless of who won today, the rough edges on display wouldn’t cut down the goliaths that awaited around the corner, in the later rounds. That said, Tsonga does seem to have a growing gift for coming from behind; he is, after all, the only man to beat Federer from two sets down in a Grand Slam tournament, doing so this year at Wimbledon.

Fish won the third set, but deep in the fourth, things came undone for him again. Serving at 4-all, and up 30-love—just six points from the quarterfinals—Fish lost the next eight points and let the Frenchman pull even to two sets all. It was eerily similar to the conclusion of the first set and seemed to portend a horrible fifth set for the American.

That’s when Tsonga finally did all those things Wilander had been wishing for way back in the first—taking control of points early, hitting with purpose, and stripping the silly from his game, while the American became increasingly despondent, eventually dropping the set, and the match, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 3-6, 6-4, 6-2.

As Fish’s triumphant summer slipped through his fingers like so many grains of sand, I thought back to something else Wilander said to me right after the first set:

“You’re either a closer or not a closer… it’s something you’re born with, not something that comes with training. You can become a better player, you can get into more positions where you have an opportunity, but that doesn’t necessarily make you a better closer.”

I had wondered about Fish’s closing abilities myself the other day after he beat Kevin Anderson in straight sets. Wilander knows more about tennis than I ever will. Whether or not he knows all there is to know about the future of Mardy Fish is something we’ll all have to wait and see.